Advanced Micro Devices reportedly plans to significantly lower the price of its current accelerated processing units (APUs) and central processing units (CPUs) next month in a bid to get prepared for the launch of products with better performance in late May early June. The price-cuts are also expected to help AMD slightly boost its market share.

A market rumour has it that in April the world’s No. 2 supplier of microprocessors for personal computers will reduce the price of its multi-core FX-series CPUs aimed at performance-mainstream desktops as well as A-series Fusion APUs for mainstream PCs. DigiTimes web-site reports that such chips as AMD A8-5600K (Trinity), FX-8320, FX-6300 and FX-4300 (Vishera) will see 8-15% price-cuts.

This month AMD started to sell several Fusion A-series code-named Richland APUs (also known as Trinity 2.0) for notebooks. It is believed that AMD intends to unveil new APUs for desktops in late May or early June. AMD A-series Fusion “Richland” APUs feature up to four Piledriver x86 cores as well as AMD Radeon HD graphics with VLIW4 architecture. Thanks to improved clock-speeds without any gains in power consumption, the new A-series APUs should be noticeably faster than the predecessors in all kinds of applications, but retain drop-in compatibility with existing mainboards. Therefore, it is logical for AMD to cut price of current-gen A-series “Trinity” products.

AMD is also supposed to release faster versions of its FX-series central processing units with up to eight Piledriver x86 cores sometime in June, boosting clock-speeds and offering a low-cost alternative to Intel’s forthcoming Core i-series 4000-family “Haswell” microprocessors that will be revealed in early June.